A Russian Raid

Mazanoff came to himself about ten minutes later, lying on one of the
seats in the after saloon, and all that he saw when he first opened his
eyes was the white anxious face of Radna bending over him.

"What is the matter? What has happened? Where am I?" he asked, as soon
as his tongue obeyed his will. His voice, although broken and unsteady,
was almost as strong as usual, and Radna's face immediately brightened
as she heard it. A smile soon chased away her anxious look, and she said
cheerily--

"Ah, come! you're not killed after all. You are still on board the
Ariel, and what has happened is this as far as I can see. In your hurry
to return the shot from the Russian flagship you fired your guns at too
close range, and the shock of the explosion stunned you. In fact, we
thought for the moment you had blown the Ariel up too, for she shook so
that we all fell down; then her engines stopped, and she almost fell
into the water before they could be started again.

"Is she all right now? Where's the Russian fleet, and what happened to
the flagship? I must get on deck," exclaimed Mazanoff, sitting up on the
seat. As he did so he put his hand to his head and said: "I feel a bit
shaky still. What's that--brandy you've got there? Get me some
champagne, and put the brandy into it. I shall be all right when I've
had a good drink. Now I think of it, I wonder that explosion didn't blow
us to bits. You haven't told me what became of the flagship," he
continued, as Radna came back with a small bottle of champagne and
uncorked it.

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"Well, the flagship is at the bottom of the German Ocean. When Petroff
told me that you had fallen dead, as he said, on deck, I ran up in
defiance of your orders and saw the battleship just going down. The
shells had blown the middle of her right out, and a cloud of steam and
smoke and fire was rising out of a great ragged space where the funnels
had been. Before I got you down here she broke right in two and went down."

"That serves that blackguard Prabylov right for saying we forged the
Tsar's letter, and firing on a flag of truce. Poor Volnow's dead, I
suppose?"

"Oh yes," replied Radna sadly. "He was shot almost to pieces by the
volley from the machine gun. The deck saloon is riddled with bullets,
and the decks badly torn up, but fortunately the hull and propellers are
almost uninjured. But come, drink this, then you can go up and see for
yourself."

So saying she handed him a tumbler of champagne well dashed with brandy.
He drank it down at a gulp, like the Russian that he was, and said as he
put the glass down--

"That's better. I feel a new man. Now give me a kiss, batiushka, and
I'll be off."

When he reached the deck he found the Ariel ascending towards the
Ithuriel, and about a mile astern of the Russian fleet, the vessels of
which were blazing away into the air with their machine guns, in the
hope of "bringing him down on the wing," as he afterwards put it. He
could hear the bullets singing along underneath him; but the Ariel was
rising so fast, and going at such a speed through the air, that the
moment the Russians got the range they lost it again, and so merely
wasted their ammunition.